A Web application is an application that is accessed via Web over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. It is a software application that is coded in a browser supported language (like HTML, ASP, PHP, Perl, Python etc.) and is rendered on a web browser.

Most of the earlier software followed client-server architecture, each application had its own client program which served as the user interface and had to be separately installed on each user's personal computer. Any upgrade to the server application required an upgrade to the clients installed on each user workstation, adding to the support cost and decreasing productivity.

But the client-server architecture resulted in a lot of problems, you need to have a license for the client on every PC which needs to run it, which costs money, and you have to have disk space, and installation scripts etc. Having a web based application means a much less complicated setup from the client side, as all they need is a working browser. In addition web applications do not require any additional software, drivers, disk space etc. The ability to update and maintain Web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers is a key reason for their popularity. Common Web applications include Web mail, online retail sales, weblogs and many other applications.

A significant advantage of building Web applications to support standard browser features is that they should perform as specified regardless of the operating system or OS version installed on a given client. Rather than creating clients for every specific operating system like MS Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux, the application can be written once and deployed almost anywhere.

In the early days of the web, web sites consisted of static pages, which severely limited interaction with the user. But with great technological advancements in Internet this limitation has been removed. Today's web applications are no longer just static brochure-ware, edited only by those who knew the HTML; now web applications are dynamic and interactive and users with little knowledge can make changes to the web applications using easy to fill forms. Without interactivity and user response, there would be no e-commerce, no e-mail, no Internet Banking and social networking communities like Orkut or FaceBook.

Olive Global, a web development company not only offers custom web application development, but a complete range of innovative and result oriented web application development solutions.

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